Jang Ki-yong's next role could take him into a geopolitical crisis. The actor is reportedly reviewing an offer to lead Get Out of the Peninsula, a Korean-Japanese co-production thriller headed for Amazon Prime Video — one built around North Korean special forces seizing a Japanese island.
Xports News reported on October 13 that Jang is considering the male lead role in the series. Nothing has been signed: the casting is at the review stage, and no final agreement has been announced. If the deal closes, Jang would headline the project as its male lead, though no details about his character have been released.
Get Out of the Peninsula is a working title for the adaptation of Ryu Murakami's 2005 novel Hantō wo Deyo. Murakami, one of Japan's most celebrated authors, won both the Noma Literary Prize and the Mainichi Publishing Culture Award for the novel in the year it was published. The story depicts the fallout after members of a North Korean special forces unit occupy an island in Japan, turning a sudden military occupation into a crisis with consequences that reach far beyond the island itself.
The novel has tempted filmmakers before. Director Kwak Kyung-taek — best known for the gangster classic Friend — pursued a film adaptation in 2006, shortly after the book's Korean publication, but the project never made it to the screen. The new version brings the material back as a series instead, produced as a Korean-Japanese co-production with filming expected to begin in Japan early next year.
Murakami is one of Japan's most provocative literary figures — the author behind Coin Locker Babies and Audition, which Takashi Miike famously adapted for the screen — and Hantō wo Deyo is among his most debated works, a tense what-if scenario about how Japan would respond when an armed force seizes part of its territory. A Korean-led adaptation of that story, filmed in Japan with a Korean star at its center, gives the series an unusual cross-border weight from the start.
For Jang, the offer continues a busy run since his return from military service. He headlined the fantasy romance The Atypical Family in 2024 and the romantic comedy Dynamite Kiss, and a lead role here would mark his first time fronting a large-scale international co-production — and his first geopolitical thriller.
Jang already has his next confirmed project lined up: an MBC Friday-Saturday drama scheduled to air next year. Get Out of the Peninsula would add a very different credit to that slate — a hard-edged international thriller, a sharp turn from the romantic and fantasy roles that built his following in series like The Atypical Family.
No other cast members, character details, or premiere date have been announced for Get Out of the Peninsula. If Jang Ki-yong accepts, the series is expected to stream on Amazon Prime Video.
